Floorball – Team Spirit inside the team

The size of the floorball team will have a great impact on the team spirit, it’s harder to get a good team spirit within larger teams. In floorball teams with good team spirit the team members also tend to take greater responsibility of the negative results.

Hockey vs Floorball and team size

The team spirit will also most likely increase if your floorball players make great efforts or sacrifices during a floorball game. Increased team spirit will end up in greater attendance on floorball practices and more sacrifices from the players for the team during games, they will also more easily respect the team norms, like coming in time.

The level of team spirit will also affect the demand on leader behavior, task oriented (low team spirit) or relation oriented (high team spirit).  High team spirit is most of the times connected to more democratic leadership.

Players in the starting formation tend to feel higher team spirit than substitutes in a losing team, but in a successful team difference is less visible between substitutes and starting formation.

In addition for clear common goals, communication and roles within the team, there are some additional things to consider regarding building up team spirit.
– Pride for the team and what the team is doing
– Team identity which will start from the game jerseys

Avoid sub-groups within the floorball team, make all of your players to know each other, this can be done through solving tasks together or with regularly meetings with the team and teambuilding activities.

Floorball victory

When you genuinely help or support others they will do the same for you. When your players are there fully for each other, they will support each other, no matter what. One of the players supporting another will next time receive genuine support back. It’s somehow build into our system, if you get support or get something, you want to give something back. You show respect and you get respect back. You show appreciation and you get appreciation.

This is of course why shops have their demonstrations of food for example, you taste, and you feel immediately you need to do something back (at least most of us), buy the product.  Try to transfer this thinking and acting into your team. You can go back and look for the Champions League games Inter played during 2010 when they won. They were there for each other all the time, and of course not only on the football field.

Extra ordinary relationships will give extra ordinary results.

Floorball – Example of a practice week

An example of a Mourinho practice week:
Monday – defense
Tuesday – transition to attack and attacking
Wednesday – attacking and transition to defense
Thursday – defense and transition from defense to attack
Friday – game tactics

Floorball skill practice drills

Mourinhos coaching and football practices mixes the best technical features from the Spanish La Liga, the best tactical skills from the Italian Serie A and the physics of the English Premiere league. This could be a good mix, right?

Mourinho has strict rules on shin pads on the football practices, since he uses condensed space in a lot of his drills to encourage competitive situations, aggression and speed in practice game situations.

Floorball – Mourinho – Everything can be controlled

Mourinho believe in control and his coaching methods focus on what is in his direct control, his opinion is that the only factor he can not control are the supporters.

One of his priorities is keeping things simple and therefore try to remove the complexity or simplify it. Focus or concentration is an another important area for Mourinhos’ players, the message is that the opponents are not stupid and can potentially have the same methods… In terms of weakness of the opponents Mourinho will try to and practice taking advantage of the individual player weaknesses, such as height of players or weak foot.

Floorball youth game

Other aspects of his leadership and coaching include a “brutal honesty”, with strict eye to eye contact and he does not censor his word no matter who the player, that you can read in the newspapers and in this book.

Mourinho believes in hard work ethics and a balanced game system, so it’s not about attacking or defending, it’s about balance between these two factors.

Floorball – Healthy snacks

Your kids have been racing up and down the field for a few hours. They’re tired, they’re thirsty and pretty soon they’re going to be downright cranky on you.

What do you give them to boost their energy level and keep their mind and bodies in the floorball game? Too many youth floorball players don’t realize just how important it is to eat a healthy and balanced diet in order to stay healthy as well as to optimize their performance in the floorball rink.

Floorball youth drills and practices

Provide a variety of healthy snacks that are nutritionally dense in order to both please your youngsters palates and fuel up their bodies in an optimal manner. Here are some suggestions to replace those doughnuts and ice cream bars at half time.

Here are some suggestions and healthful snacks to give your youth athletes:

  • Apples
  • Bananas
  • Baby carrots
  • Piece of bread
  • Sandwiches
  • Toast
  • Water

Each floorball game is a practice game, until you earn your living on it

Stress affects floorball performance

Performance connected stress arousal

The figure above is showing the performance of two equal floorball players (capacity, when they are at their best), the difference is on their stress levels. A players optimal performance might be in the beginning, middle or at the end.

The first line/player will perform well or at his/her best with lower demands and stress level, while player two needs and can play at his/her best with high demands and expectations.
Do you know these curves for your players? Who will perform well in critical situations and who will be at their best with low expectations? These curves are just two examples, you would probably have as many different lines as you have players.

Floorball practices, games and drills

Each floorball game is a practice game, until you earn your living on playing floorball. That’s a quite good attitude to have, to keep the right perspective on things and situations, to try to keep the stress level on an acceptable level.